Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the financial implications for her policies of trends in the level of debt acquired by water companies.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Water companies are allowed to raise debt to fund the delivery of their services.
Ofwat, as the independent economic regulator, assesses and monitors the financial resilience of each company, including levels of debt, on an individual and ongoing basis and challenges companies where they identify this is needed.
Over recent years, as investment requirements have risen, Ofwat has taken further steps to strengthen the financial resilience of companies. This includes increasing its financial monitoring and improving levels of reporting transparency. As part of this work, Ofwat produces an annual ‘Monitoring Financial Resilience Report’ to provide a publicly available assessment of the financial resilience of each water company.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much their Department spent on hospitality in (a) 2021, (b) 2022 and (c) 2023.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We do not routinely publish this data, as has been the case under successive administrations. All Business Units within the Department have a responsibility to keep official hospitality costs as low as possible and demonstrate good value for money. Details of ministerial and senior official hospitality are published on a quarterly basis, and are available on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what data her Department holds on the amount of time taken to inform candidates applying for jobs at the Environment Agency of the outcome of their application and whether they have been called for interview in each of the last five years.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The average time taken to inform candidates of the outcome of their application to a job advertised at the Environment Agency for each of the past full five calendar years is shown in the table below.
The data is for the period between the advert close date and the date the applicant was notified of the outcome of their application. The outcome of the application is either for the applicant to be invited to interview or for them to be informed that they have not been invited to interview
Year | Average time taken in working days for applicant to be notified of the outcome of an EA job application |
2018 | 14.6 |
2019 | 12.7 |
2020 | 16.0 |
2021 | 12.7 |
2022 | 12.7 for posts advertised using the established EA recruitment system 13.7 for selected posts that have used a different recruitment system for part of 2022 |
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what was the average time taken for an environmental permit application to be processed in each year from 2015 to 2023 inclusive.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The average time taken to process applications in each year between 2015 and 2023 is shown below. This covers applications across Water Abstraction, Discharge to Water, Waste and Industrial Processes. There is a widely varying level of complexity in the applications determined which means drawing statistical comparisons across such a wide range doesn’t accurately account for the different requirements.
It is important to note that many application types have seen legislative change and increases in complexity during this time period, making year on year comparison difficult. The Environment Agency have seen a reduction in application quality during this time, requiring additional processing by their permitting department. Backlogs were built up during 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic which the Environment Agency have now largely recovered and they expect 2023/24 to see a reduction in average times.
Year Average of KPI3 (Days):
2015 - 41
2016 - 53
2017 - 64
2018 - 60
2019 - 72
2020 - 89
2021 - 85
2022 - 106
2023 - 107
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department spent on taxi cabs for (a) ministers and (b) civil servants in each of the last three years.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The following table sets out expenditure on taxis in each of the given years. A split by ministers and civil servants could not be obtained on this occasion without incurring disproportionate costs.
Year | Taxi Spend (£) |
2019 | 143,210.25 |
2020 | 30,288.49 |
2021 | 19,898.34 |
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department spent on first class train travel for (a) ministers and (b) civil servants in (i) 2020, (i) 2021 and (iii) 2022.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The tables below set out the expenditure on first class train travel in each of the given years.
(a) Ministers
Year | Total Cost (£) | Number of Journeys |
2020 | £564 | 3 |
2021 | £285 | 2 |
2022 to date | £0 | 0 |
(b) Civil Servants
Year | Total Cost (£) | Number of Journeys |
2020 | £1,550 | 13 |
2021 | £2,066 | 13 |
2022 to date | £3,345 | 20 |
The department's travel and subsistence policy permits first class travel in a very limited number of circumstances, such as accompanying a Minister or due to a disability. Such travel requires a strong business justification and prior approval by a senior civil servant.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department has spent on (a) agency workers and (b) agency retainer fees in (i) 2020, (ii) 2021 and (iii) 2022.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
(a) agency workers
Agency workers (more commonly referred to as “contingent labour” or “temporary workers”) are subject to a Cabinet Office controls framework to ensure robust governance of spending in this area.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contingent-labour-spend-control
Commentary on contingent labour usage, if applicable, is available in departmental annual reports.
The Crown Commercial Service provides two frameworks specifically for the supply of Contingent Labour which are used by central government departments. These are:
RM3749 - Public Sector Resourcing.
https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/rm3749
This provides a managed service for departmental use including low supplier margins, regular pay rate benchmarking, comprehensive tracking and reporting of contingent labour assignments, full timesheeting and approvals technology and onboarding, contracting and payroll services.
RM6160 - Non Clinical Temporary and Fixed Term Staff
https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/RM6160
This provides access to a range of generalist, specialist and niche contingent labour agencies offering a wide range of suppliers, maximum margins, free transfer to permanent after 12 weeks and onboarding, contracting and payroll services.
Use of these frameworks provides robust governance, visibility, value for money and flexibility in meeting departmental contingent labour needs.
(b) agency retainer fees
We have interpreted agency retainer fees as the fees charged at the commencement of the provision of a search recruitment service. This is only applicable when recruiting for a permanent or fixed term post.
Agency retainer fees are not applicable to the contingent labour market.
There is no recorded expenditure on agency retainer fees.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department has spent on consultancy fees in (a) 2020, (b) 2021 and (c) 2022; and what the name is of each consultancy contracted.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The provisional consultancy spend for 2021-22 is £26.970m for the Core Department and Agencies.
The department’s spend on consultancy is published each year in the Annual Report and Accounts.
2020-21
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/defras-annual-report-and-accounts-2020-to-2021 (page 100)
2019-20
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/defras-annual-report-and-accounts-2019-to-2020 (page 87)
The names of consultancies contracted are listed below
A LUCK ASSOCIATES |
Actica Consulting Ltd |
Aether Ltd |
ALCHEMMY CONSULTING LTD |
Alexander Mann Solutions LTD |
Amber Employment Services Ltd |
Amec Foster Wheeler |
ARCADIS CONSULTING UK LTD |
Arpexas (Scotland) Ltd |
Bankserve |
Beamans Ltd |
Biopharma Consulting (BPC) |
BLUE BORDER LTD |
Broadhead Global Ltd |
Business Solutions Limited |
Capita |
Change Associates Ltd |
Commercial Consultancy Ltd |
Costain Ltd |
CURRIE and BROWN UK LTD |
Daisy Communications Limited |
Deloitte LLP |
Dirac Delta Solutions Ltd |
Dr Gabriele Hesselbein |
Dr Marion Simmons |
Dr Vanessa Carn |
DTA ECOLOGY LTD |
EBC CONSULTING LTD |
ENGINEERING SAFETY CONSULTANTS LTD |
Eric Crutcher |
Ernst & Young LLP (EY) |
FINYX CONSULTING LTD |
FIRST RESPONSE TRAINING and CONSULTANCY SERVICES LTD |
Frontier Economics Ltd |
G2 Recruitment Solutions |
Government Legal Department |
Health Management Ltd |
Ingentium Ltd |
IVDEOLOGY LTD |
J Weeks |
JACOBS UK LTD |
John Points |
Jones P Consulting Ltd |
JSA Services Ltd t/a Workwell |
Julie Gibson |
Keep IT Simple |
KLIFOVET AG |
KPMG |
KPMG Safi Al Mutawa & Partners |
L T S INTERNATIONAL LTD |
Learning Light |
Local Partnerships LLP |
Lockhart-Garratt |
Louisa Wood |
LSSC Ltd |
M Botony |
Management and Risk Solutions Ltd |
MCKINSEY & CO INC UNITED KINGDOM |
Met Office |
Methods Business Digital Technology |
METHODS CONSULTING LTD |
Mo Gannon & Associates Ltd |
Modality Systems Ltd |
Morgan Langley |
Network Rail |
Nibiru Ltd |
PA CONSULTING SERVICES LTD |
Park Health & Safety Partnership LLP |
Perfect Circle JV Ltd |
Philippe Sabot Consultant (PSC) |
PJM-HS CONSULTING LTD |
PKM Digital Ltd |
PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS LLP |
Proxima |
PUBLIC DIGITAL LTD |
RADMAN ASSOCIATES LTD |
Rare Little Beastie Ltd |
RBS |
REED |
REQUIRED EXPERIENCE LTD |
Richard Parker |
ROYAL VETERINARY COLLEGE. |
RSK GROUP PLC |
Seed Science |
SGS UK Ltd |
Silversands Ltd |
Stentiford, Grant |
THE BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP UK LLP |
The Neoteric Tech Company Ltd |
The Research Box Ltd |
Triple G Consulting Ltd |
University Of Liverpool |
VETERINARY VACCINES CONS LTD |
Whiteball Ltd |
WILLS TOWERS WATSON LTD |
WRAP |
WSP GLOBAL |
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much their Department has spent on air travel for (a) Ministers and (b) officials in (i) 2020, (ii) 2021 and (iii) 2022.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The table below shows the amount spent on commercial air travel for Ministers and officials for calendar years 2020, 2021 and 2022, based on booking date.
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
Ministers | £508.55 | £1,354.13 | £34,889.88 |
Officials | £95,931.59 | £35,470.98 | £286,116.75 |
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much their Department and its associated agencies spent on legal disputes in (a) 2020, (b) 2021 and (c) 2022.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Defra and its associated executive agencies1 have incurred the following costs on Litigation for the calendar years 2020 to 2022 (up to 30/6/22):
Amount (£m)2 | Calendar Year |
0.93m | 2020 |
1.47m | 2021 |
0.61m | 2022 |
1: Includes the Animal and Plant Health Agency; the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science; Rural Payments Agency and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate.
2: Source data from the Government Legal Department’s (GLD) electronic systems as at 8 July 2022. These figures represent the costs charged by the litigation team in GLD. It does not include any costs awarded against Defra or damages.